The battle continued an hour and twenty minutes. During this time, the regular troops under Colonel Clinch were subjected to a brisk fire, and their loss was severe. Eight men were killed and forty wounded, of whom about one-third died of their wounds. Several officers were also wounded. The militia consulted their own safety by refusing to expose themselves to the fire of the enemy; while the regular troops lost, in killed and wounded, nearly one-fourth of their number. The allies drew off, leaving Colonel Clinch in possession of the field; but the victory had been won at great expense of blood; and the determined coolness and gallantry of the veteran officer who commanded our forces, saved them from a total defeat.
The blows thus far had fallen most heavily upon our own troops. It became evident, that the carrying out of General Jackson's policy, of removing the Exiles and Indians from Florida, in order to encourage and sustain slavery, was to be attended with great sacrifice of blood and treasure. But while the Government and people were looking at these unexpected exhibitions of firmness and love of liberty, on the part of the allied forces, other scenes were presented to their view. The fugitive slaves who had recently left their masters in Florida and joined the Exiles, were stimulated with that hatred which slavery alone can engender in the human breast. They thirsted for revenge upon those who had held them in bondage; who had scourged and tortured them. They were acquainted with the location of the small settlements throughout the Territory. Uniting with the more daring spirits among the Indians and Exiles, they proceeded rapidly and stealthily from plantation to plantation, burning buildings, destroying property, and scattering devastation throughout the border settlements; at times murdering whole families, killing and scalping such individuals as fell in their way.
Men who had urged on the war with the hope of seizing and enslaving the maroons of the interior, now saw their own plantations laid waste, and in frequent instances mourned the loss of wives and children, instead of rejoicing over captured slaves, whom they had intended to acquire by piratical force. Farms, and the smaller villages on the frontier, were abandoned to the enemy; and the inhabitants fled to the larger villages, where they banded together for mutual defense. The citizens of Florida who had petitioned General Jackson for the forcible removal of the Indians, because they failed to capture and return slaves, were now compelled to flee, with their families, before the infuriated servants who had left them subsequently to the signing of that petition. Driven from their homes--their property destroyed, their servants fled--many families, who but a few months previously had been regarded as wealthy, were now suffering from the want of bread.[84]